Shock of the new starts to hit workers

Page Tools

Sudden change is in the offing in Tasmania due to hard decisions avoided in the past, writes Andrew Darby.

To Scott McLean, the burly and grizzled state secretary of the forestry workers' union, it is the worst of possible futures.

His members, the backbone of Tasmanian bush towns, are being told that generations-old logging traditions are over.

"They are being told, 'You might be able to serve a caffe latte, or perhaps an unwooded chardonnay, to people driving past.' "

Such a fate may seem unbearably hard to men of the bush. But with Mark Latham's big policy leap yesterday, notice was served that the days of wholesale industrial logging of old-growth forests in Tasmania are short. Instead, sudden generational change is in the offing, the legacy of hard decisions avoided in the past.

Since the 1983 saving of the Franklin River, Tasmania's forests have been the island's prime environmental conflict zone. Tree-by-tree struggles have been fought in dozens of forests, from Farmhouse Creek in 1986 to Blue Tier this year.

They have meant hundreds of arrests, beatings and sabotage against protesters' vehicles and logging machinery.

In 1989, an attempt was made by the Hawke government to end this through a royal commission, the Helsham inquiry. But it returned a divided report, and despite expansion of the Western Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area to 1.3 million hectares, many old-growth forests were left open to logging.

Then in 1997, the Howard Government completed a Regional Forests Agreement to determine which trees would be logged, or reserved, across the state.

It protected another 50,000 hectares but left so much for logging that a government sponsored community consultation process called Tasmania Together was able to come up with the list of 240,000 hectares Mr Latham is basing his review on now.

The growing push to save more forests came with Tasmania changing character. Its population is booming as an influx of mainlanders seeks a better lifestyle.

The logging towns where Scott McLean's members live are sprouting pavement coffee tables for tourists. One prominent logging contractor's family is diversifying into a vineyard restaurant.

As election day approaches, Labor's forests policy has gone to the heart of the Tasmanian forests divide.